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WXPT
WXPT, channel 5, is an NBC owned-and-operated television station located in Mixopolis, Planet Mixel. The station is owned by NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations subsidiary of NBCUniversal, and is part of a duopoly with Telemundo station WSXF (channel 64); Both networks are owned by NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. WXPT maintains studio facilities and business offices at NBC Plaza on Christopher Street in the city's Oxford Circle neighborhood, and its transmitter is located atop Overlook Mountain. History Early Years The station first signed on the air on October 8, 1948 as WNBX, the seventh television station to sign on in Mixopolis, one day before ABC signed on WXYZ-TV. WNBX initially broadcast a minimum of two hours of programming per day. The station's first mid-week broadcast came the month following its sign-on, when Simon Robinson and Jorge Bowers were featured on the variety series, the Room Show. The half-hour program was recorded via kinescope, and rebroadcast on WNBX at 9:30 p.m. on Thursdays. The station installed equipment to produce and transmit its programming in color in late 1953; WNBX's first notable color telecast occurred in January 1954, when the station broadcast NBC's telecast of the Rose Bowl parade in the format. Channel 5 aired its first local program to be broadcast in color, when Clay Allison's Home & Garden debuted in March 1955, which utilized time-lapse color film. On April 15, 1956, WNBX became the first television station in Planet Mixel to broadcast all of its programming in color, an event described by the Mixopolis Times as "a daring breakthrough the black-and-white curtain", completing a project that cost more than $1.25 million to make the upgrades; the first color telecast from the station on that date was Around Planet Mixel, which was transmitted to Planet Mixel's five NBC affiliates. Reborn as WXPT Although NBC had long owned the WXPN radio stations, the television station continued to maintain call letters separate from that used by its co-owned radio outlets. The call letters were changed on August 31, 1964, when the network changed the station's calls to WXPT, standing for "Mi'X'''o'P'olis '''T'elevision". During the 1960s, WXPT gathered and distributed more than 200 feeds of news footage per month from Europe and Planet Mixel to NBC News. On December 3, 1985, NBC signed a $100 million+ agreement to lease office space in a planned 34-story, 1,000,000-square-foot (93,000 m2) skyscraper – a project developed by the Equitable Life Asssurance Society and Tishman-Speyer Properties – that would be constructed as part of the World Trade Center development on the northwest corner of Christopher and West 14th Streets, in which WXPT's operations would occupy 251,000 sq ft (23,300 m2) of the building; under the plans for the project, NBC was given the option of acquiring an approximately 25% interest in the building. On October 1, 1989, the station officially relocated its operations from Grand Central Market after 40 years and began broadcasting from NBC Plaza, located on 455 Christopher Street (the 19th floor of the Market, two miles northeast of NBC Plaza in midtown Mixopolis, has since been converted into office space). Ratings for WXPT's newscasts overtook those of WEOM in the 1980s, but the station could not dethrone market leaders WMX and second-place WXYZ-TV during the period. In 1986, WXPT became the first station in the Mixopolis metropolitan area to broadcast its newscasts in full stereo sound, prior to this, all of the NBC network programming broadcast on the station began their commercial stereo broadcasts in 1985. In 1988, WXPT and several other NBC owned stations began started 24-hour broadcasting, ironically, WXPT became the fifth station in the Mixopolis metropolitan area to began airing 24-hour broadcasting following Mix TV flagship station WMX, then-Independent station (now The CW affiliated) WXPL, Koopa Troop Television Network owned-and-operated station WKMX and Fox owned-and-operated station WXIM; during the first years of the station's 24-hour schedule, the station signs off during the overnight hours on early Monday Mornings for reasons other than necessary transmitter maintenance, the sign off practice was discontinued in 1992, due to the logo change which is occurred before the 1992 Summer Olympics. In 1989, WXPT became the first station in the Mixopolis metropolitan area to adopt its real-time closed captioning for the hearing impaired in all of its newscasts; 5 years later in 1994, the closed captioning service was later added to the station's morning newscast. In the Spring of 1992, the NBC owned stations division announced that they would not aired paid programming on all of its owned-and-operated stations, including WXPT, the last informercial aired on the station was a local weekly real estate show aired in 1992; currently, the station currently ran infomercials on the occasional basis, mainly during the weekends. In 1995, WXPT changed its on-air branding from "Channel 5" to "NBC 5 Mixopolis"; additionally, became the fourth station in Mixopolis, after WMX in 1993, and Righi Broadcasting Company owned-and-operated station WMXR and New Line Network owned-and-operated station WMXNL, both in 1994, to launched its website, which provided news reports and information on the station's community initiatives and on-air staff members; the station expanded its Internet offerings in 2000, when they branded it as "Peacock Club". For most of its years, The station did include the network's logo next to theirs, branding solely with the channel number and/or call letters vocally and visually (outside of network-created radio promos which listed the station as "NBC Channel 5" or "NBC Channel 5 Mixopolis") until 1995. The station is among the few in the nation which has their logo in a transparent bug with time and temperature at all times, including NBC network, syndicated and news programming, though not during commercial breaks or paid programming. Present To improve its reception of the station, on June 5, 2000, the station's transmitter at Overlook Mountain extends its western antenna height to 1,730 feet (527 m). In July 2000, NBC entered into a local marketing agreement with WPXX-TV (channel 62), resulting indirectly from NBC's partial ownership interest in WPXX-TV network partner Pax TV (now Ion Television) and a related management agreement with that network's owned-and-operated stations. Under the LMA, the two stations shared certain programs, while WXPT handled advertising sales services for channel 62; the agreement also allowed WPXX to air rebroadcasts of channel 5's 7:00 and 11:00 p.m. newscasts on a half-hour delay. The LMA ended on July 1, 2005 upon Pax's rebranding as i: Independent Television. In the fall of 2001, NBC Television Stations buys WSXF outright, result in creating a duopoly with WXPT; as a byproduct of the purchase, NBC converted that station into an O&O of Telemundo – which NBC had purchased earlier that year, creating the 2 stations as the second Commercial television stations in Mixopolis. WSXF subsequently integrated its operations into WXPT's NBC Plaza facilities. On September 6, 2003, WXPT agreed to lease 4,000 square feet (370 m2) of space at 30 Middle Plaza in Midtown Mixopolis, with the intent to build a streetside studio. The station's morning and noon newscasts were broadcast from the Middle Plaza facility until February 2013, when the studio was closed and the space within the 30 Middle Plaza building was put up for sale, at which time production of both newscasts was moved back to NBC Plaza. In November 2007, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a $10,000 fine against WXPT for "failure to publicize the existence and location of its children's television programming reports" because the station did not keep adequate records on commercial limits in children's TV programs. In the fall of 2008, WXPT's website was relaunched including a new layout as part of a larger revamp of the websites of NBC's entire O&O station group. On January 18, 2011, the FCC and Department of Justice approves the acquisition of station's parent company NBCUniversal by Comcast with the deal closes on January 28; during this period, the branding was shorten to "NBC Mixopolis" during the short period, which is applied only during mentions in some news reports, network and syndication program promotions and public service announcements, however they continued to use the "NBC 5" branding in news opens; later in February 2012, after a year to used the "NBC Mixopolis" branding, they reverted to its old "NBC 5" branding full-time. In January 2012, after 12 years of using the gold "5" logo, the new logo was officially introduced in some promos and in print ads, but the new and current logo made its on-air debut on February 28, 2012, coinciding with the new graphics and set. In December 2009, the Mixopolis local of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-Communication Workers of America has launching a boycott against WXPT, despite the 20 NABET members at the station had ceased to be part of the union and were technically reclassified as station management, exempt from union jurisdiction, while the 46 NABET members where remained at the station, the station spokeswoman told Homer Barker of the Mixopolis Times said that they did not comment about the labor-related issues that hitting the station. Prior to the boycott of the station, In October 1994, the union, along with Republican candidate George Larney has joint forces to boycott WXPT due to its negotiations involving its national contract with the network; and in the Summer of 1987, a handful of technicians at WXPT-TV, WXPN-AM and WXPN-FM went on strike due to the nationwide strike of the network; technicians at other NBC-owned stations was also went on strike as a result. On February 3, 2012, the station rejected a political advertisement with anti-abortion talking points from activist and Democratic presidential candidate Randall Terry to air during Super Bowl XLVI with the FCC's approval, determining that Terry did not have the bona fides of a serious candidate; content in the ad included the term "Democrat Party", which the Democratic National Committee considers a pejorative referencing term, along with in general going against the party's pro-choice platform. In February 2015, WXPT and the other NBC-owned stations offered live, web-based streaming of programming to subscribers of participating cable and satellite television providers, as provided through the TV Everywhere Mobile Apps. A month later, in March 2015, WXPT and WSXF along with many other sister stations went live on Sony's internet television service PlayStation Vue as part of its Access package, the other NBC O&Os as well as Berfield/Willis Broadcast Corporation-owned NBC affiliate WGID in Detroit was also added to PS Vue's access package in the summer and fall of 2016. 2 years later in April 2017, WXPT and WSXF along with a number of sister stations was live on Youtube TV, the streaming service with live streams of programming from the 2 stations was officially launched on April 5, 2017. Cable and Satellite Carriage Disputes Dish Network On March 15, 2016, NBCUniversal pulled the signals of WXPT and WSXF along with co-owned cable channels USA Network, Bravo, Syfy, MSNBC and CNBC from Dish Network systems in Mixopolis metropolitan area due to a dispute between NBC and Dish in which Dish Network claimed that NBCUniversal demanded to renew its carriage of NBC-owned stations and Telemundo-owned stations including those removed due to the dispute. Three days later on March 18, 2016, the company announced it will continue to carry WXPT, WSXF and five other cable channels for another 10 days while seeking arbitration from the FCC. Digital television Digital channels The station's digital channel is multiplexed: WXPT also maintains a Mobile DTV feed of digital subchannel 5.2 (labelled "NBCMobile"), which broadcasts at 1.83 Mbit/s. On January 1, 2012, Universal Sports transitioned into a cable- and satellite-exclusive service, causing its affiliates (such as WXPT) to replace the network and remove the channel from their digital signals entirely, with WXPT deleting digital subchannel 5.3 as result of the loss of Universal Sports. WXPT-DT2 WXPT launched digital subchannel 5.2 as a charter affiliate of the original NBC Weather Plus in January 2005; the network ceased national broadcasts on December 1, 2008, although the subchannel continued to utilize its local weather maps and traffic reports as NBC Plus afterward. "Raw" coverage of various live events have also been carried on 5.2.[ On November 1, 2010, WXPT launched NBC Mixopolis Nonstop, a news and lifestyle network featuring local programming and programs produced by corporate sister LXTV; NBC Nonstop was relaunched as Cozi TV, which soft-launched on December 20, 2012 (officially launching on January 1, 2013). Analog-to-digital conversion WXPT shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 5, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 29. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 5. On April 13, 2017, it was revealed that the over-the-air spectrum of sister station WSXF had been sold in the FCC's spectrum reallocation auction, fetching $141.7 million. WSXF will not sign off for good, but it will later share broadcast spectrum with WXPL. if the sister station will moved to their frequency or the digital subchannel of that station following the auction, the station will planned to move its channel allocation from digital channel 29 to digital channel 33 and it will remained on virtual channel 5 once is complete. Programming As typical for a network-owned station, WXPT generally carries the vast majority of the NBC network schedule. However, the station does not clear the entirety of NBC's weekday overnight lineup (pre-empting the network's rebroadcasts of the fourth hour of Today and CNBC's Mad Money). Syndicated programming broadcast by WXPT (as of September 2016) include Access Hollywood (including its live counterpart), Steve Harvey (both distributed by corporate sister NBCUniversal Television Distribution), and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. With this (in part, due to its weekday schedule being heavy on locally produced and NBC network programs), WXPT has the second-lowest amount of syndicated programming among the Mixopolis market's television stations (with only New Line Network owned-and-operated station WMXNL having the fewest amount, with zero hours), and one of the lowest amounts in the country. Station oddities *WXPT was one of some NBC owned-and-operated stations that does not carry Access Hollywood Live. The talk show spin-off of Access Hollywood aired from the program's NBC O&O debut in September 2010 until September 2014, when those stations dropped the program due to low local viewership in those markets. On September 6, 2016, Access Hollywood Live returned to WXPT and the other NBC-owned stations following the cancelation of The Meredith Vieira Show which is aired on that timeslot. Community Outreach For many years, WXPT, as part of its commitment to serving the community through extensive local programming, has run a series of different public service campaigns to help educate people on relevant issues and values of the day. The station has numerous relationships and partnerships in serving the Mixopolis community with charities and non-profit organizations including American Cancer Society, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Autism Speaks, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Special Olympics, United Negro College Fund, and March of Dimes, among others. In addition, The station produces a news series "Making a Difference" which is aired on the Weekend morning newscast. The station launched the "Making a Difference" initiative in March 2014; later in September 2015, the station also launched the "NBC5 Making A Difference Awards" to further spotlight these individuals at community events. Make a Wish Miles for Smiles Telethon WXPT has hosted the "Make a Wish Miles for Smiles" telethon for many years to raised funds for Make a Wish Foundation, The first annual telethon was first held on June 12, 2012 as a one-day only telethon; following the success of the first telethon, the second telethon was held on June 13, 2013. After the first 2 telethons held in the Summer season, The Telethon was now held in the Spring season beginning in 2014. In 2017, WXPT and the Make a Wish Foundation has decided to cancel and scrapped plans for the 2017 telethon in March, however the foundation will continued to donating their airline miles through its "Wishes in Flight Program" as result of the cancelation of the telethon. Wednesday's Child In 1999, WXPT has partnered with the Planet Mixel Department of Children and Family Services and the Freddie Mac Foundation to joined forces to create a news series called Wednesday's Child, which is aired on the 6:00 p.m. newscast on Wednesdays and on the Sunday morning newscasts, the mission of the news series is to bringing the children to the living rooms of about 500,000 Mixopolis area residents that is never adopted to their homes. It remained until the last report in 2005. Health and Fitness Expo/Travel Expo For many years, WXPT held its annual Health and Fitness Expo in September each year at the Hollymixwood Boulevard Mall, including activities like Health screenings, Workout sessions, Cooking demos, consultations and meet and greet the station's personalities and guests; The first event was named as "Health, Fitness and Fun Fair" in 1997 at an adjacent movie theater, but the event has moved to the Hollymixwood Boulevard Mall and to January in 2003 and 2005, the later events was held in March 2008 and 2009; following the success of the Health and Fitness Expo, the station was also held their Travel Expo annually in November in 2007 and 2008 also at Hollymixwood Boulevard Mall, the expo was includes Cultural presentations, Trip planners, games, fun activities, and meet and greet the station's on-air staff and celebrity guests. In 2009 and 2010, WXPT management announced that the Travel Expo will not returned for 2009, as a result of the massive layoffs hitting the station in Spring 2009; and the Health and Fitness Expo will not returned in 2011 due to the station's parent organization will be acquired by Comcast in January of 2011. Back to School and Winter Coat Drives Since 1996, WXPT has held the Winter Coat Drive held during the Holiday season, the Coat drive has helped raised funds for The Salvation Army and during the 2011 Holiday season, Kerry Wood's Wood Family Foundation; The mission of the Holiday Coat Drive is to aim awareness for the needy Mixels by bringing used or new coats. following the success of the Holiday Coat Drive, the station also launching its Back to School Supply Drive held annually in the Summer season, the drive is to raised funds for the Mixopolis School District's Supply the Future campaign by donating their school supplies as part of their effort. In 2016, The station announced that will not held its Back to School drive for 2016, however the station will continued to sponsor the MSD's 2016 Back to School Campaign due to cancellation of the station's Back to School Supply Drive. Gallery WXPT_1976.png|Logo used between 1976-1979 WXPT_1985_logo.png|WXPT's Circle 5 logo, 1985-1986 variant WXPT_1986_logo.png|WXPT's Circle 5 logo, 1986-1992 variant WXPT_Channel_5.png|Logo used between 1992-1995 WXPT_1995.png|Logo used between 1995-2000 WXPTTV.png|Logo used between 2000-2012 News operation WXPT presently broadcasts 43 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 7 hours on weekdays, 4 hours on Saturdays and 4½ hours on Sundays); in addition, the station produces the half-hour sports highlight program Sports Sunday, which airs Sunday evenings after the 11:00 p.m. newscast. Category:Channel 5 Category:Television channels and stations established in 1948 Category:Mixopolis Category:Planet Mixel Category:NBC affiliated stations Category:Current NBC Affiliates Category:NBCUniversal